This invention relates to a tone signal generation device used in an electronic musical instrument or a tone source module and, more particularly, to a tone signal generation device having plural tone sources and having at least one tone source of a tone source system using a modulation operation and being capable of utilizing an output of other tone source as a modulating signal in the tone source of the tone source system using a modulation operation and also sounding this output as a tone.
This invention relates also to a tone signal generation device having plural tone sources of different tone generation systems and generating a tone signal by assigning to the respective tone sources partial tone signals corresponding to element tone colors which are combined together to form one complex tone color.
Further, this invention relates to a tone signal generation device having plural tone sources of different tone generation systems and being capable of freely selecting a combination of tone sources used for tone generation.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 61-29895 discloses a tone signal generation device using a self-feedback type modulation operation which has a memory storing a waveform of plural periods sampled from, e.g., a natural musical instrument tone and in which a waveform signal is read from the memory by a phase address signal corresponding to a frequency of a desired tone pitch, the output of this memory is fed back to the address input side to modulate the phase address signal corresponding to a frequency of a desired tone pitch and the output of this memory is provided as a tone signal.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 61-39097 discloses a tone signal generation device of a frequency modulation (hereinafter referred to as FM) operation type which has a memory (as it were a PCM tone source) storing a waveform of plural periods sampled from, e.g., a natural musical instrument tone and in which the output of this memory is used as a modulating wave signal or this memory is used for generating a carrier signal.
These prior art tone generation devices can be said to have two tone sources of a PCM tone source and an FM tone source and use a waveform signal generated in the PCM tone source as a modulating signal for the FM tone source.
In the above described prior art tone generation device, the PCM tone source is substantially included in the FM tone source and cannot be used effectively as an independent tone source. In other words, the prior art devices have the PCM tone source but cannot use it for other purposes than as a modulating signal or a carrier signal. For this reason, the tone color of a tone which can be synthesized is limited to one having a characteristic of the FM tone source and hence limitation is imposed upon forming of a tone.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 59-168493 discloses an electronic musical instrument which includes a quasi-PCM tone source using a memory storing a waveform of plural periods sampled from a natural muscial instrument and generating a tone signal by reading the waveform from the memory, and a quasi-waveform operation system tone source generating a tone signal by executing a waveform operation such as an FM operation, and synthesizes a final tone signal adding waveform signals generated from the two tone sources in response to depression of a key. This prior art electronic musical instrument, however, is limited in its forming of a tone because it merely adds and synthesizes two tone wave,form signals generated in two different tone sources.